undertoad

From John Irving's 1978 novel The World According to Garp, in which the title character's son Walt mishears warnings about the undertow at the beach as warnings about an "under toad", causing the title character to subsequently use the phrase "under toad" to refer to the omnipresent threat of disaster that lies beneath the surface of everyday life.

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undertoad (plural undertoads)

1. An underlying threat of disaster beneath the surface of everyday life.
   • 1979, New West - Volume 4, Issues 14-20, page 11:

     Fully two thirds of the earth's surface is covered by water. The other one third is covered by a crack team of investigative reporters led by a crusty old bureau chief. This very fact means that the subject of water is fraught with grave political undertoads.

   • 1990, Fortnight - Issues 280-290, page 21:

     But the European framework has, as John Irving would say, 'an undertoad'. Kings in Conflict and Ireland's Fate both underscore the painful conclusion that Ireland, her rights and wrongs, was of little or no consequence within what was seen by...

   • 1994, Louis Owens, Bone Game: A Novel, →ISBN, page 61:

     You're like Garp; you always imagine every terrible thing that could possibly happen. You see undertoads everywhere.

   • 2003, Thomas Lowe Taylor, Superprose:

     ...the wish-delight of pure belief, unseasoned faith in being true, no cynicism to ease the pain, you said that, tapping-in, as it were, and the visible monologue says, go on, and fire the fall, the undertoad reciting the quick shots are your cards and letters imitating scorn or envy or distrust not present, but pure panic culls retreat from your coins today, today the crossing over into birthdays, into the new cycle...

   • 2013, Ann Todd Jealous, Caroline T. Haskell, Combined Destinies: Whites Sharing Grief about Racism, →ISBN:

     While attempting to plumb the intensity of my feelings about the “deep dark secrets,” known by absolutely everyone, I have been reminded of the “undertoad.”

2. A mythical monster that lurks underwater to catch unwary swimmers; a personification of an undertow.
   • 2004, Joan Cox, To Love, Honor and Obey, →ISBN, page 36:

     It was that undertoad what took old Bill's boy clean under the water and never brung him back up,” reminisced Will.

   • 2005, Kathy Ann Chandler, Honeysuckle Memories, Bitterweed Times, →ISBN, page 25:

     “Baby, watch out for the undertoad.” I just had this vision of this big toad out there waiting to grab me and take me off to Cuba. She kept saying the undertoad was in the water.

   • 2009, Robert L. Anderson, The Life, Beliefs and Divine Detours of a Tennessee Mountain Man, →ISBN, page 292:

     Parents would warn the small children to stay out of the water or the "undertoads" might get them.

   • 2014, Deborah Emin, Scags at 7, →ISBN:

     He says something about an undertoad and sometimes that happens in Lake Michigan. Giant frogs love the bottom of the lake, Pops has told me, and you have to be very careful.